Word: novello
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...later years, right up until his death last March, Novello produced box after box of fluffy entertainment for the British public-and there in the middle of almost every show was Ivor. He was not only Britain's Ziegfeld but also Britain's Valentino, and for a while her Jack Barrymore too; added to which he was one of the most successful song writers of his day, and a maker of light comedies second only to Noel Coward...
...Ivor Novello, a biography by Peter Noble, British theater historian, does full, sometimes fulsome, credit to its flamboyant subject, and tells a success story as pat as any Novello melodrama...
...Song for History. Ivor Novello Davies was born in Cardiff, Wales, the son of David Davies, an accountant, and Clara Davies, a singing teacher. Little Ivor was early set down as a prodigy, at least by his doting mother, because, she said, he cried in perfect thirds. Mother was impatient for promise to become performance. "Darling," she reminded him all through his boyhood, "do you realize that if you died tomorrow, it would not make the slightest difference to the world...
...when he was only 21, wrote out one that made him both rich and famous: Keep the Home Fires Burning. It caught the ear of the marching men, and they sang it into history as one of the most popular songs of all time-to the distinct discomfiture of Novello's regular publisher, who rejected...
...Call of the Blood, when it was shown in 1920, puffed Ivor into a fullblown matinee craze, and The Rat, a melodrama which Ivor wrote, produced and starred in, made him a leading figure on the stage as well. Glamorous Night, the first Novello musical (in which he also starred), was a huge hit. The Dancing Years, his fourth musical, ran for ten years. Ivor composed seven musicals before he was through, all beautifully decorated and loaded with the brisk tunes and languid ballads that Britons had learned to expect...